The fact that people were actively choosing to heat up 0 and 1-star gear for the sole purpose of maybe getting Forge Boxes, and then selling those Forge Boxes in large enough numbers that GH decided they needed to patch it...that is utterly insane to me. Seriously, what are we doing here people?

I fully agree, I was really enjoying testing my skills with all the 0* gear. Sure I was doing it mostly for personal use, but being able to sell them finally got me my Black Kat Raiment too. Reduculous that they changed it, especially since they already shadow nerfed the droprates to hell. The least they could do is up that again to what it was initially. Then at least it would still be viable to do it instead of FSC if all you want is some UVs

This is what they patch out before anything else? Tonedeaf change aside, they can't even keep their games straight. Another demonstration of how much thought goes into these patches. It was nice to be able to squeeze any value at all out of odd-stratum stages while it lasted.

This kind of adjustment would make sense with a UV rework, since UVs being hostile, pure RNG is why boxes were being sold instead of used in the first place. Simply getting the correct type of UV with a Low strength value is already a big investment, exponentially more with higher strength, because of the very real possibility of ending up with something worse than you started with unless you can roll in great quantities.

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. No one is benefitting. I don't understand what the point of this was. Please revert it. Listen to your players for once. Why was this a priority over anything players are actually asking for.

Every 0* forge box sold is saving 20k crowns that would have been deleted by punch. Instead, 15k crowns get sent to another player, and continue to exist in the economy. I found the emergent forge box market and forge box data gathering undertaken by players to be quite interesting, and it is a shame it is being removed.

I don't know about all of that, because I think grinding in that way is actively unhinged, but I do know that early-game players who are getting to trade on things like this are losing a way to give themselves a leg up on getting into the game.

Additionally I haven't done the math, but it might be the case that lower tier fire crystals are more imminently available (through downcrafting etc) though, and the upfront cost of those downcrafting cycles possibly still amounts to less than what Punch is asking for a UV ticket. It has to beat 20,000 crowns, and with energy on the floor I'm sure it makes sense to some players to save crowns in even just the hundreds while they're strong - but I can't account for that without doing some numbers.

My problem with the change is that on a long list of priorities the game might otherwise have for changes worth making, this is centring on a very recently adjusted part of the game ostensibly trying to invite players in - and now it's hastily ushering some of them right back out again with a "No, not like that." Even if I don't think it's particularly fun to grind like that, it still represents a choice players can make, and that choice (inscrutable as it is) is being taken away for even more inscrutable reasons.

Edit: Matter of fact, I do have the time to pick at this a little. I have in my inventory 2390 Warm Fire Crystals - it takes 96 using x3 rolls to max an item assuming you never skip a level. Don't forget, this change was made to 2* weapons as well - and WFCs are NOT hard to find.

Choosing to downcraft 3 warm into 5 dim is viable because 1) they cost 25 crowns to downcraft and 2) max heat for 1 and 0 star items is 63 for 10 3x attempts on a 1* and 36 for 10 3x attempts on a 0*. I don't know the exact odds of a box dropping but given that we're working with 2-digit figures for crown investment for fire crystals, warm fire crystals are **absolutely everywhere** and the cost of a UV ticket is 20,000 crowns, I think it's pretty fair to assume that people are making a truly enormous saving on their UV tickets.

Any reasonable assessment of this would lead to the conclusion that "Hey, maybe UV tickets are too expensive if players are trying to sidestep this grind?", but instead...

You're honestly correct, and I did some numerical noodling to figure out my own thoughts, but another reason I struggle to see the value in this change is that it doesn't seem to positively impact anything. In fact it might even make the problem of crown retention worse. The actual payoff for a trading player is probably that a cheap UV ticket represents increasing the price of a *very expensive* item by a significant degree. I understand why that kind of player got drawn in - you heat your 0*, 1* and 2* weapons, and have a chance at a cheap-enough-as-free roll on your favourite 5*? That's kind of a hard proposal to snub if you care about the economy of it as much as a player very invested in the market might.

Allowing these cheap boxes to be traded should have been the start point of a broader UV rework, and in an abundance of supply the prices of them would have ideally started to fall - which would have meant that the small portion of players choosing to play like this would be subsidising players who just want to try their hand at buffing their starting gear a touch without having to drop 20,000 crowns there and then. But now it seems like staying in the rut is the plan. It *could* have been an interesting way to gain reward through challenge. It could have been a lot of things.

I'm not out here trying to excuse it, but the fact that this was a principal concern in the wake of the forge changes that have already been made kind of speaks poorly to the intent to adjust other things.

@Pdtopgun The easiest way to wrap your head around it is to think of it like an extrapolation of breaking bushes for crowns as you've shown fondness for already.

Though there are up-front costs, the return on boxes exceeds the initial cost of 0* equipment and crystals since they're compared against ticketless UV rolls costing 20k crowns at Punch. It requires menuing between stages, but this doesn't take much time when hitting Esc to cancel the forge animations, and cycling in new equipment as necessary is similarly quick.

You cannot get orbs or sparks from 0* forge boxes. They're purely for the UV tickets. Orbs and sparks start dropping with 1* boxes onward. Only 2* boxes onward hold any value to a new player as that's when T2->T3 crafting lines begin with 2* orbs.

In moderation, it is not disruptive to bring 0* armor as it includes Cyclops Cap for Gun DMG+2 and Fencing Jacket for Sword DMG+2, which are equivalent offensive bonuses to most 5* armor. With matching weapons, this is equal or a modest drop in damage output in exchange for significantly less health and defense, which typically does not matter for clear speed in easier stages. 0* weapons contrastingly do pose a liability without relegating them to unused extra slots except block-hitting / switch-toggling utility, like Chilling Duelist working as well as any other Antigua for objects that don't care about damage.

The fact that this is a viable strategy and even a highlight of the Forge changes speaks to how poorly structured this game's progression and reward structure are, like Vyre noted. Heat being capped per level ironically made this a good option for shorter, low-pay stages - which players are desperate to see improved as they haven't been relevant for intrinsic reasons ever since the mission system superseded the Arcade.

This is a very strange change because it does not affect extremely aggressive 0* forge box farming and does affect players who either don't have nearly enough money to get or upgrade their UVs or simply don't care about UVs altogether and want a little extra mileage out of each stage clear instead of heat wasting into the aether. It doesn't seem to be motivated by efforts to dissuade multiboxing because such players would be the least affected by low-star boxes being bound since they can trade UV-candidate gear with themselves.

@Leafblader lord knows Danger Missions need all the help they can get too lol.
Always liked that we could freely change equipment in those reward rooms. It's a very small amount of heat, but simply being able to distribute it as we see fit is uniquely valuable.

I'm also at the point where I have the equipment I care about where I should stockpile tickets, and I very foolishly thought to stock up in advance of a mythical balance patch in case of any big shakeups with weaker equipment, but my heart goes out to anyone who used this to stay away from FSC while still making meaningfully quick progress.